On Sundays, Hunger Takes the Day Off in Garden Grove

It is not nearly 3 p.m. yet, but they are beginning to gather. Arriving in ones and twos and threes, they bear bags with the labels of Vons, K mart, Lucky.

The attire is informal--bent-billed baseball caps, printed T-shirts, worn shoes.

They are the clientele of an unusual and inexpensive dining spot in Garden Grove: the benches of Pioneer Park on Chapman Avenue, just east of Harbor Boulevard. They are the homeless and the working poor and those simply down on their luck, and they come to the four-acre parcel of grass and eucalyptus trees to dine each Sunday afternoon, courtesy of a nameless group of Garden Grove residents.

“You talk to these people sometimes,” says Mary L. Hennessy, 47, a secretary, “and you think, ‘There but for the grace of God. . . .’ ”

She’s the unofficial spokeswoman for an unofficial group of two dozen or so local residents who feed the destitute in that park, working without recognition or government help.

They work silently and efficiently, almost anonymously, as they have for the past 2 1/2 years, serving meals for up to 300 people a day at the park in north Garden Grove.

“We’re just a group of people who cook meals every Sunday and get together and carry it to the park,” said Hennessy. “We don’t have any kind of formal organization; we don’t belong to the same church or anything like that.”

The anonymous group first came to the city’s attention when Hennessy, representing the neighbors, asked the Garden Grove City Council to put a cover over the picnic area in the park to shield the meals from wet or hot weather. There had been a cover once, but the city removed it because people were sleeping on top of it. The subject led to a heated exchange between two city councilmen.

“As the chief of police of Garden Grove for 13 years,” Councilman Frank Kessler said in opposing the request, “I know the problems we’ve had at Pioneer Park. Parents are afraid to let their kids use the bathroom there for fear of some of the people who live in the park. It’s a shame when the people of Garden Grove can’t use the facilities that they paid for.”

Councilman J. Tilman Williams, who supported the shelter, answered that no one “on the council has ever been homeless but me,” recalling long journeys on foot with his father, sleeping in bathrooms and under trees during the Depression.

The council rejected the covering but told the staff to make sure that electricity is turned on during the Sunday dinner hour for the group.

Hennessy holds no grudges. “Some of the homeless do cause problems,” she acknowledged.

The lack of government help has its up side, too.

“It does keep us from getting tangled up in a lot of regulations,” she added.

About a third of the people who arrive at Pioneer Park on Sundays for the meal are parents with children, Hennessy said.

“Some of them are situations where both parents work, but they both make the minimum wage. That’s less than $10 an hour, and to support several children, it’s just not enough.

“I had one woman say to me that her kids were crying all day Saturday because they were hungry and that she told them that they would eat good on Sunday,” Hennessy said.

The fare is a Sunday feast: roast beef, baked ham, beans, salads, ice cream, hamburger, soups and rolls.

After the meal, the mess is cleared away.

“We try to make sure that the park is just as clean when we leave as when we arrived,” Hennessy said. “Some of the homeless pitch in and help us in this.”

To one side of the dining area is a table that dispenses information on jobs, government assistance and housing. Clothing and personal items donated by the group and its friends are distributed, including diapers, shaving supplies, blankets and toothbrushes.

Sometimes one of the volunteers, herself a former “customer,” gives free haircuts to men going to job interviews.

The dinner completed, the guests and servers prepare to leave. It’s time to tip the help. A middle-aged man walks up to the knot of people packing up to return to their suburban homes in the neighborhood.

“Thank you,” he says. “And God bless you.”

“God bless you, too,” replies a volunteer.

“I don’t know,” says Hennessy, eyes shining just a little. “You come here for just one time, and then you get hooked.”